


Signal to Noise

by incognitajones



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Enemies Forced To Work Together, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-28 18:11:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: Rose always figured she’d go out like Paige—blown into atoms on a ship under fire—not at the hands of a crazed Dark Side user. But as it turns out, Kylo Ren might not be trying to kill her.





	Signal to Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maplemood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/gifts).



> Your prompts were delightful, maplemood, and I hope you enjoy this!

Alarms scream and warning lights flash as the ship alerts her to what Rose can see perfectly well on the viewscreen: a matte black TIE Interceptor with sleek, swept-back wings hovering over the surface of the small moon. Like it was waiting for her. 

Maybe it was, maybe this was just (bad) luck—Rose doesn’t want to find out. She’s not as good a pilot as Paige was, so realistically speaking this is a foregone conclusion. But she won’t give in. She yanks the throttle up hard and the poor, aging shuttle shakes and whines as it tries to give her the speed she’s asking for. 

The TIE fighter fires at her, but misses. It seems to shoot deliberately wide, in fact, and Rose wonders if this is supposed to be a warning or if the pilot is just as bad a shot as most of the troopers seem to be. She jinks to the side again, trying for some kind of fancy evasive maneuver, but as she sees the glow of the fighter’s laser cannons intensify she realizes she’s managed to fly straight _into_ the blast— 

_Way to go, Rosie_. She can practically hear Paige laughing at her before the silently expanding white blast of an explosion blinds her. She looks forward to telling her big sister where to get off very soon.

 

But when Rose opens her eyes, Paige isn’t there.

Through acrid, blue-grey smoke, a nightmare looms over her: all sharp angles and black cloak, eclipsing the dim light in the cockpit. Kylo Ren’s face is ghastly pale except for dark pools of bruising under his eyes and a thin red scar across one cheek. He looks unhealthy, unhinged, like every horror story Rose has ever heard about the Dark Side come to life. 

“Where is she?” he snarls. His red lightsaber ignites beside her throat, its crackling energy searing a hole in the headrest of the pilot’s chair. “Where’s the Jedi?” 

Rose knows lightsabers don’t throw off sparks, that’s not how they work, but she can’t help cowering away, expecting to feel hot spitting fire on her cheek. “She’s not here!” 

That’s what she’d tell him anyway, of course, but it has the advantage of being the truth. Rose is the only one onboard; she’d volunteered for this emergency supply run, as the person most disposable.

This is not how Rose expected to die; she always figured she’d go out like Paige—blown into atoms on a ship under fire—not at the hands of an evil, crazed First Order zealot. Or the actual Supreme Leader now, if Poe’s intelligence is to be believed. But apparently she didn’t die when her ship crash landed on this barren moon. And now she’s about to be sliced in two. She closes her eyes and thinks of her sister, praying that the next thing she sees will be Paige’s smile.

“I can’t sense her anywhere…” he mumbles to himself. The saber’s hum ceases and its glow shrinks and vanishes behind her closed eyelids. “Wait. You’re Rey’s friend. The Tico girl.”

How the hell does Kylo Ren know who she is, or that she knows Rey? Did he just read her mind with his creepy Sith powers? Rose shivers. Not wanting to give Kylo Ren any more information, she tries to think about porgs, porg eggs, all the porgs building nests in the wiring of the Falcon, and Chewie yelling at them… It’s hard to focus on anything, though. Spikes of pain shoot down her spine with every breath she manages to take and nausea is making her gut churn and her throat clench. Blood trickles down into the corner of her eye from the epicentre of pain on her forehead and when she blinks her head throbs agonizingly.

Maybe it’s the head injury, but Kylo Ren seems to be acting oddly. Of course, she has no idea what “normal” means for him. He keeps glancing at the co-pilot’s seat. It’s empty; there’s no-one on this wrecked ship but Rose, but from the way Kylo Ren is acting she’d swear another person was sitting there. She tries to focus her blurry vision on the spot he’s looking at; but there’s definitely no-one there.

But when Kylo Ren walks toward her, he avoids that space just as if there were someone sitting there he didn’t want to bump into. The shape of his attention is so clearly outlined around ignoring them that Rose can almost see them now too.

“What are you looking at?” She might as well ask, since she won’t live for much longer once Kylo Ren gets what he wants from her—whatever that is.

“Someone who shouldn’t be here, because he’s _dead_.” 

“You can see ghosts?” Rey’s never mentioned such an ability, or even hinted at it. Maybe it’s in one of those old Jedi books she hasn’t finished deciphering yet...

“No. That’s not how the Force works,” he snaps. And again, his eyes focus on someone in the chair beside her; someone who isn’t there. “I’m not talking to _you_!”

Rose shrinks back into her seat, pressing farther away from Kylo Ren. She’s injured and trapped alone with the scariest person she’s ever heard of who seems to be—to put it mildly—unbalanced. Tears of pain and terror well up in her eyes as she thinks of Finn, and Rey and Poe and the General and all the other people in the Resistance who need her to be brave. She vows that she will be strong for them, she won’t say another word.

He reaches a black-gloved hand toward her head and she jolts away instinctively. The movement sends a surge of nausea roiling up through her belly into her throat and she vomits all over his shiny leather boots before he can jump back. She’d laughs at the disgusted look on his face if her head didn’t hurt so much.

Kylo Ren grimaces and steps out of the puddle of bile. He crouches down beside Rose’s chair and she tenses, waiting for him to—to hypnotize her or whatever evil Force users do. She has no idea, she’s never seen anyone but Rey do anything with it. She hopes it doesn’t hurt too much.

“I can’t heal you. I was never any good at that.” 

Rose blinks. Why would he even try? 

His gaze flickers past her to the empty-not empty seat again and he snarls, “Shut up.” His hand rises before her face, fingers taut and clawed wide. Rose waits to die... but instead the first aid kit slams into his grip. He must have made it come to him the same way Rey can lift things with her mind. Setting it down on the grimy floor, he digs through it for a bacta patch and a painkiller swatch, both of which he slaps clumsily on her skin.

“That should hold you until the emergency beacon signal can reach someone,” he mutters. With the same gesture of a raised hand, he summons a blanket and drops it over her. 

Even fear can’t keep Rose awake for long now that she’s warmer, and in (somewhat) less pain, and feeling the sudden adrenaline drop of an unexpected reprieve from death. She gives in to exhaustion and closes her eyes. Either she’ll wake up feeling better, or she’ll be dead. There’s not much she can do about it right now, either way. 

 

Rose bolts awake from a fuzzy, disorienting and unsettling dream of fire. When she sees Kylo Ren still there, she feels a wave of relief that she’s not alone, and then a reversing tidal surge of fear. Just because he hasn’t hurt her yet doesn’t mean he won’t. 

On the other hand, he hasn’t killed her yet, and she would never have expected to survive one minute past meeting Kylo Ren, let alone hours. Rose clutches the amulet hanging around her neck and tells herself to be as brave as Paige would be. 

He’s sitting crosslegged on the floor, his long ungainly robe hiked up around his thighs in a ridiculous way, and examining the ship’s emergency beacon. At first she doesn’t understand why there are pieces of it hovering in the air around his head, and then she gasps. 

They don’t even wobble as he scowls at her. “Quiet—I’m trying to concentrate. This piece of crap is about as powerful as a toy comlink.”

“I don’t know what kind of tech the First Order uses, but we make things to last in the Resistance,” Rose says before she can help herself. “I rebuilt that beacon myself and made it better.”

“Really? It’s working so well at the moment.”

“It’s not working because you shot down my ship!” Rose yells. “Or did you forget that part?” She subsides into silence as her throbbing head reminds her that screaming hurts.

The pieces rain to the floor of the shuttle in a tinkle of screws and small parts that Rose knows are going to be lost in the crevices. Kylo Ren looks at her sidewise from beneath the lank hair hanging in his face, and Rose shivers. He doesn’t look any more sensible, still half-crazed and his eyes black pits set in dark sockets that look bruised.

“If the beacon won’t work, you have to give me the Resistance frequency so I can transmit directly to the flagship.”

Rose knew it; he had an evil plan all along. Of course he did. “Why the rathtar-riding hell would I do that?” She tries to pull her back straight and look like someone who can’t be intimidated. Like Poe always says the Resistance can’t be.

Kylo Ren closes his eyes, but not before she sees him flick another glance to the same spot he was watching before. The invisible person on the ship that he can’t seem to keep his eyes off of. “Because I need to warn General Organa about a threat to her life.”

Rose’s mouth falls open and her brain stutters like a failing transmission. She might not be good at putting words together, but she doesn’t think she’s ever been stunned into complete silence before. “What,” she finally manages to get out. “Why.”

 _How stupid do you think I am?_ is what she really wants to ask. But that seems like it might provoke him, so she doesn’t. 

Apparently he _can_ read her mind, though, because he glares at her. “It would be stupid to lose the only capable leader you have. Do you understand? Someone thinks they can get to her on Jelucan, and for all I know they might be right. Do you trust the people she’s gone to see there? Do you even know anything about it? Why am I talking to you? This would all be so much simpler…” He trails off and doesn’t finish his thought.

Something in the back of Rose’s mind is making connections, tracing the circuits until they snap together in her head: Rey had originally been the one slated for this supply run until the General needed her for another mission and Rose stepped in.

Did Kylo Ren think _Rey_ would be easier to convince? Maybe Force users have some kind of way to prove to each other that they’re telling the truth. Maybe he was going to let her read his mind. But Rey couldn’t come and now he’s stuck with Rose instead—just a mechanic. No wonder he’s so pissy; not that he seems like the kind of person to take any setback in his stride.

Wait. Is she actually feeling sympathy for the Supreme Leader of the First Order? This towering, temper-tantrum-throwing, murderous nightmare? Rose blinks. She’ll blame it on the head injury.

“Why would you care about General Organa? Don’t you want her dead?”

He grinds his teeth and doesn’t answer right away, staring at the empty-not-empty corner of the cockpit again. 

“I think she can be… negotiated with,” he says finally. “Certain people believe that killing her would guarantee the First Order’s victory by causing the Resistance to fall apart. I disagree. I don’t want to make a martyr out of her.”

“If you see dead people, no wonder you don’t want her killed,” Rose mutters. “She’s already terrifying, I wouldn’t want her haunting me.”

It makes a certain superficial amount of sense, and yet it doesn’t match up with what little she knows of him. Rose was unconscious at the time, of course, but she’s heard how wildly Kylo Ren attacked Luke Skywalker: out of control, hacking away brutally with his lightsaber. He didn’t seem to care about martyring the last Jedi; why should he care more about Luke’s sister? 

Rose remembers some of the obscure rumours and whispers she’s heard about Kylo Ren, and the strange, significant looks Finn and Rey always exchange when he’s mentioned. What’s the connection she doesn’t know about? She examines his bony, pale face and wonders…

“Will you do it or not?” he snaps at her, interrupting her chain of thought. “If you won’t I don’t really have any incentive to help you, do I?”

“How am I supposed to talk to the General?” Rose glares back at him. “I’m not exactly part of high command.”

Kylo Ren snorts. “She’s always had a soft spot for feisty loudmouths. Get her to listen. Convince her not to go to Jelucan. However you can do it, I don’t care.”

Rose thinks it over suspiciously. It seems like a fairly harmless request; the worst that could happen is that if the Jelucans are offended by the General’s sudden cancellation, the Resistance might lose a potential ally. But they’re already pretty friendless. Staying that way wouldn’t be a decline in their situation, just more of the status quo.

“If this is some backhanded way to get the General to stay put for an ambush or an attack, I promise I will make you pay,” she says, trying to sound as intimidating as she can. Which she knows isn’t very—Paige was better at it; the extra height helped.

“It isn’t.” He rears back, offended again.

“But I’m not going to give you the Resistance code. I’ll help you with the beacon so we can send out an ordinary emergency signal.”

“I don’t need your help to repair a basic piece of equipment.”

“Really?” Rose stares at the pieces scattered on the floor. “Because it sure looks like it. I might not know anything about the Force, but I know more than you do about how to fix an ELT beacon.”

If possible, he seems even more offended by that, which is pretty ridiculous. Why would Kylo Ren care about small electronics repair? Rose shakes her head and grimaces as it makes her brain slosh painfully inside her skull. The bacta patch must have been past its best-before date, like a lot of Resistance equipment, because it’s not working very quickly. 

In the end Rose directs him on what to do, because her hands are still shaky and her vision a little blurred. 

Kylo Ren, unsurprisingly, doesn’t take direction very well. His enormous hands look like they should be clumsy, but are oddly clever and delicate with tiny components. On the other hand, he completely lacks the patience necessary to figure out stubborn mechanical faults. If something doesn’t work the first time, he wants to give up and try something else completely different. 

Rose firms her jaw despite her still throbbing head and goes on explaining to a sullen Sith Lord (or whatever he is) exactly how to squeeze extra juice out of an ELT signal. 

When he’s finished, he sets the beacon in her hands so that she can input the correct frequency. Rose won’t do it until he’s gone, of course, she’s not that trusting. But as she watches him put his gloves and his cloak on again, transforming back into the terrifying apparition she first saw, she realizes just how weirdly normal (or at least, normally weird) he seemed while he was struggling with uncooperative technology. 

For someone with such a massive frame, Kylo Ren moves lightly. He looks back at her, once, before he opens the airlock panel behind which lies the connection to his ship. “Remember our agreement.” 

Rose has never been very good at being stoic and silent. She knows she shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t tell Kylo Ren any more about her than he already knows, but she can’t help blurting out, “My sister Paige—she’s dead… could you see her, or talk to her? If you tried?”

If he could tell Paige how much Rose misses her, how hard she’s trying to live up to Paige’s example, be the kind of person Paige would want her to be… if Paige would even listen. Rose pictures a ghostly Paige trying to slap Kylo Ren in the face, and is caught between tears and laughter.

“No.” His voice is almost gentle. He glances at the empty space beside her again, and Rose can’t help looking over as well. Who’s there that she can’t see?

 

When the _Falcon_ finally reaches her, the sight of her friends’ faces is the best thing Rose has seen in months—years. While everyone is still hovering around her, helping her to a berth and bringing her water, she manages to stammer out the bare outline of her story.

“Kylo Ren shot down your ship,” Leia repeats, stunned. 

“Did he hurt you?” Poe demands.

“No.” Rose swallows. “In fact, he was—well, he wasn’t kind, but he helped me repair the emergency beacon. And he gave me first aid.” 

Finn lifts the wing of her hair to look at the tacky, drying bacta patch on her forehead.

“We still need Rey to check you over once she’s back,” Poe says harshly. “Who knows what kind of brainwashing banthashit he might have tried.”

Leia shakes her head. “Rose doesn’t seem to be under any duress, and I think I would sense that.”

As Poe storms out to comm Rey and Finn goes to rifle through their dwindling medical supplies for another bacta patch, Rose reaches out to catch at the General’s sleeve. Who knows when she’ll get another chance alone with the woman? She has to tell her now.

“He doesn’t want you to go to Jelucan.”

“What?” Leia halts and stands so perfectly still that she seems like a monument, the statue of a queen.

“That was Kylo Ren’s condition for helping me—I was supposed to pass on a message. Don’t go, it’s a trap.”

“A trap,” Leia repeats softly to herself. Then she turns to stare at Rose, her eyes piercing. “Did you believe him?”

“He seemed… sincere. Please don’t go,” Rose blurts. “If he was telling the truth, it would be a really bad idea. And I think he probably was.”

Leia takes Rose’s hand and squeezes it gently. “Thank you, Rose. For keeping your head and for being brave. I’ll take your message, and its source, into consideration.”

Rose looks at the General’s dark eyes and high cheekbones, and wonders, but keeps her speculation to herself even in her head.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **englishable** , as always, for their quick & thoughtful beta commentary!


End file.
